Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Can't play to my fullest potential without a good grand

so i've been practicing on an old, public baby kawai for awhile now and hit some serious plateau. I stoo by a Steinway dealer to play on a B and virtually every problem I had (mostly concerning tone and dynamics) disappeared and my music sounded better than I've ever heard. Any ways, i'm just really sad that it had to be this way

for all you good grand owners, make her sing.. for me !

Don't give up on what you have. All my parents could afford when I was taking piano lessons was a very used and battered Wurlitzer upright that they bought for $500, and it lasted me until conservatory. I figured if I could make that piano sound good, I could make anything sound good. It was a great motivator and I like to think that it paid off long-term.

well now that is humbling, you're right brendan, i suppose i'm lucky to even have a grand to play on .

Nothing beats a Steinway B - except, of course, the D.

Steinway D.

/thread

You're in your 20s?

Think of it like this: a good piano masks your mistakes and shortcomings. If you can play well on a bad piano, you can play well on a good piano.

True to a certain extent, maybe, but I personally find going from my 15-year old digital to any acoustic a real shock. Every time. My main problems are that real pianos feel so much more 'alive' and unpredictable (even well-regulated ones), and that I overpedal hugely. Still, you make do with what you have, right. I'd rather have my terrible digital than not be able to play at all!

Ah, yes. But to paraphrase -- not sure if it's Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky -- All good pianos are alike. Crappy pianos are each crappy in their own way. ;-)

I disagree. That's like saying a Ferrari will mask bad driving skills. It won't. A Ferrari makes bad driving obvious. A Honda will mask bad driving because everything is designed to be idiot-proof. Like a Gillette razor. Real skill is using a double-edge or a straight razor. If you screw up, you'll pay for it in blood.

I have to disagree as well. Some good pianos will highlight your shortcomings.

Players of all levels, from beginner to concert artist, sound better on a good piano vs. a bad one. But this doesn't mean a lousy player will sound good on a good piano. The only sense in which a bad piano might mask one's mistakes is if the tone/tuning is terrible it might distract the listener from other deficiencies the pianist has.

A great piano will reward great playing with fabulous sound. A great piano will also reveal all sorts of stuff that needs work (from a pianist), such an uneven articulation, fine control over dynamics, and tone in general.

It's really well worth it as a learning experience to visit dealers who stock top-tier pianos (Steinway, Steingraeber, Bosendorfer, Bluthner, Fazioli, Grotrian Steinweg, and there are others). Some top tier pianos give instant rewards. Others may give the sense that have have to "grow" into the piano. Meaning more control is needed to really get the fine details from a piano that's capable of making. In that sense top-tier pianos are like other things - high performance cars are often mentioned - where high-performance capabilities require someone who really knows how to get to them.

Larry Fine's Piano Guide is a great reference to get overall context about the "tiers" that pianos fall into. Here's a page about the different levels of quality pianos tend to fall into. Of course this is one source of information–in the end it does come to the experience of playing on a great piano, which is where this thread began

i feel i can still learn new pieces and practice in every other way, but one thing that is impossible to work on is dynamics. doing the pp-to-ff sense touch, i have to "smash" my finger onto C to make it forte compared to the ease of touch it takes on a good grand. despite how i try to get around this issue on the kawai, it is just not possible. this is devastating but my appreciation for the beast has not changed

Playing on a good piano is a sort of unrivaled joy, to be sure. It's a feeling you cannot get really any other way.

That said, the real challenge is to attain that sort of musical experience even on a crappy piano. This take FAR more skill, to be sure, and perhaps the exact same effect could never be pulled off. But it is amazing how close some people can get.

That said....after I had the chance to play Horowitz's grand once.....I couldn't help but thinking "oh THAT's why he is so great!"

(of course not the actual reason....but it was my gut feeling at the time)

I hope this thread lays to rest the old argument that a digital piano is just as good as an acoustic. Playing on a well regulated and voiced Steinway D is mind boggling. I remember trying out an older, concert prepped, Steinway CD at a store and it seemed as if rainbows were coming out of the body of the piano. If I had the money, ($90K) I would have bought it right then. I find I can create tones and dynamic changes on a D that I can't do on my O.

A former concert pianist recently told me that one of the reasons she gave up the professional concert circuit was the fact that,"I put in all that work and come in to find a terrible piano." I think she was saying that the subtlety of "all that work" wasn't evident on a poor instrument. It's too bad we can't load our instruments on our backs and carry them from place to place. This may be the only reason I envy other instrumentalists.

Well, *a* digital can be as good as *an* acoustic, if the digital is good enough and the acoustic is bad enough.

I've certainly never seen a digital that plays nearly as well as a well-prepped concert D (or the equivalent from the other top makers).

On the other hand, I've also never played an acoustic upright that compared with that great concert grand; or a small acoustic grand, even by the top makers.

A top digital -- or even a pretty good digital -- can be a better practice instrument than a bad acoustic, though. I had to play a bad, tiny acoustic grand for practice on the road last week. I'd have been better off schlepping my Casio PX-350 with me on the train. Of course, I'd have been much happier still playing on my acoustic at home, but that just wasn't an option.

All that said, there's nothing like playing a truly fine concert grand, and I don't expect that any digital instrument will ever provide a comparable experience, much as I believe that digitals have a legitimate place for piano learners.

I think practicing on a crap piano and learning to get a decent sound out of it is excellent exercise and will make you sound even better on a ballin' piano.